SAKAI, OSAKA ¨C In Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, two things are certain: You¡¯re never far from the remains of dead people and you¡¯re never far from a knife. The two are connected, but not in the way you might think.
Historically an important seaport with a current population of around 830,000, Sakai is conspicuous from the air owing to its massive keyhole-shaped burial mounds ringed by moats and a wall of trees and hemmed in by urban sprawl.
These burial grounds, which were built over hundreds of years beginning in the third century, helped put Sakai on the map ¡ª literally ¡ª attracting legions of laborers and skilled craftspeople.
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